Browsing: Pretrial Release

New York City’s five police unions are joining grieving parents to plead with judges and lawmakers to address the surge in gun violence, blaming the spike on bail reform and criminals not being held accountable. This comes as the City Council’s April 1 deadline to detail reform measures approaches.

A group of criminologists and law professors challenged a new report by the Pretrial Justice Institute contending that pretrial risk assessment instruments are dangerous. “The benchmark here is not perfection but improving upon unaided human judgment, which is universally acknowledged to introduce racial and other biases,” the group said in an open letter.

Reducing the number of people held in pretrial detention and ensuring public safety are “not mutually exclusive,” Jonathan Lippman, former Chief Judge for the New York Court of Appeals, told a Webinar exploring the impact of New York’s historic bail reform law Wednesday.